Treading on shaky ground

The popular festival of Chhath brings out the best in Bihar. The annual worship of the sun god creates an infectious festive spirit everywhere in the state. Everybody looks happy and takes part in the celebrations with a sense of piety.

But this year, a pall of gloom descended on the holy festival following a stampede on the banks of the Ganga in Patna, which killed 17 people, mostly women and children.

It was the first mishap of its kind during Chhath in Bihar, which belied the hollow claims of the state administration.

Prior to the festival, the officials had made tall claims but the tragedy exposed its utter lack of preparedness at all levels for the festival.

The administration had declared several ghats dangerous, kept 32 motorboats ready to keep vigil during the puja and deployed hundreds of police personnel and officials at different places to ensure an incident-free festival.

But once the mishap occurred, it proved absolutely unequal to the task. The administration had made a pontoon bridge at the Adalat Ghat, one of the busiest ghats, in the run-up to the festival, apparently for the convenience of the devotees who had to cross a swampy stretch to reach the river.

But at the same time, it erected two makeshift bamboo bridges at the same place where 40,000 to 50,000 people were likely to worship on two days.

It remained oblivious of the inherent danger in putting up such fragile structures on the swampy banks of the river. None of the bamboo structures was fit to carry the load of the milling devotees.

The administration also did not deploy adequate number of police personnel to regulate the traffic on these bridges. The cops-on-duty failed to restrain the crowds of devotees while they were returning home in the evening.

According to eyewitnesses, there were no checks on the entry into the narrow exit routes. Besides, there was no public address system working at the ghat when the stampede took place.

It had supposedly stared over a rumour about an electric current, but there was nobody around to dispel the rumour.

What is more shocking is the fact that the district officials informed the National Disaster Response Force(NDRF) unit almost 90 minutes after the disaster.

The situation was worse at Patna Medical College Hospital, the premier hospital in the state capital, where the victims were taken. Relatives of the victims alleged that the doctors failed to rise to the occasion.

They believed that many lives could have been saved had the administration and the doctors been pro-active after the disaster.

In the absence of administrative alertness, it was left to the locals to save the lives of people. They carried the injured to the hospital on their own without waiting for the arrival of the ambulances.

Some of them, in fact, rushed to the hospital on foot carrying little children, who were already dead, in their hands. The Good Samaritans showed much more presence of mind than the police and administrative personnel who were present at the site of mishap.

The state government has since set up an inquiry by the Principal Home Secretary Aamir Subhani, who is expected to submit his report by the end of the month.

But whatever the outcome of the probe, the government will have to ensure that its officials are properly trained to deal with situations arising out of emergencies.

It will also have to make solid arrangements for the Chhath festival every year to pre-empt the loss of lives of innocent people in future.

Top marks for Nitish

Although meant to be an evaluation of his administration, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's (above) refrains from critiquing his ministers' showing while releasing the annual 'report card.'

"This is not a classroom," he said at this year's event, providing relief to many of his Cabinet colleagues who had not come up with a creditable performance.

Journalists, meanwhile, were also happy that they got to grill so many ministers in between their bites of sumptuous food that Kumar usually has on offer.

Mahavir's golden age

The famous Mahavir Mandir near Patna Junction -the second highest revenue-generating shrine in North India - has a new look. It has acquired two gold kalash (above) worth Rs 40 lakh.

Made by a Chennai-based company, it took 3 months to compete these awesome pieces. The rust-free, 13-foot-high main Kalash weighs 118 kg while the other is 9-foot-high and weighs 70 kg. It is said that the gold will not lose its sheen for the next 100 years.

Pedalling past other politicos

Bihar's deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi remains one of the fittest minister in the Nitish Kumar Cabinet. He sticks to a disciplined regimen, doing his brisk morning walk everyday regardless of his schedule.

This, of course, helps him in staying fit, which is often demonstrated at various official and non-official ceremonies where he leads by example to arouse health consciousness.

At the Prohibition Day in Patna, Modi was scheduled to flag off a cycle rally near Raj Bhawan but he chose to ride a bicycle, giving a complex to fellow ministers at the scene. He loves to cycle down the streets of Patna.

Hardly surprising then, he was the natural choice as the chief guest when a new state-ofthe-art gym opened at Boring Road recently.

Finding fun in the city

Gone are the days when the residents of Bihar's capital had to depend only on good old Hindi movies for entertainment.

Patna now boasts of many avenues that provide getaways with a difference to the people. A 5-D theatre called Thril Park was recently opened at the P&M Mall to provide viewers a different kind of movie-watching experience.

Its tickets are priced at Rs 120 on weekends for short films on different themes, but the adventure lovers have been queuing up in large numbers to enjoy the 5-D experience.

But it is a newly opened water park called Funtasia Island on the outskirts of Patna that has turned out to be the biggest crowd-puller.

Located at Sampatchak, it is the first-ever water park in Bihar and has been a hotspot for entertainment-starved families to let their hair down. Entertainment never had so many dimensions in the city.